Million-Stream Mystery: AI Band’s Deception Sparks Call for Spotify Rules

A perplexing mystery unfolded on Spotify as The Velvet Sundown, a country-folk band, achieved over a million streams before it was exposed as an elaborate AI creation. This startling discovery has ignited a crucial conversation among music industry leaders about the necessity of clear guidelines and regulations for artificial intelligence in music.
For weeks, the band’s two albums, Floating On Echoes and Dust And Silence, were embraced by listeners who believed they were enjoying the work of human artists. The Velvet Sundown’s seamless integration into the music landscape underscored the impressive capabilities of AI to mimic and produce compelling musical content.
The unraveling began when an adjunct member went public, revealing that Suno, an AI platform, was behind the band’s entire creative output. While the band initially pushed back against these claims, they later issued a statement confirming their non-human origins, describing themselves as a unique blend of human creative direction and machine generation.
In the wake of this revelation, there’s a strong consensus among music veterans that streaming platforms must be legally obliged to disclose when content is AI-generated. They emphasize that without such transparency, the trust between artists and their audience is jeopardized, and consumers are left in the dark about the true nature of the music they support.